The power of love

[10.10.2013]
Hello my sweeties,

Two days ago I told you about the teenagers from Morocco who are in prison now because of posting a kissphoto of them on Facebook. To keep up the topic love I wanna present you a young woman for who love was also everything. If you remind the word of the month you might know who I mean. Well, it’s Selma Meerbaum-Eisinger.

Selma was born in Czernowitz in 1924. She loved the German language and that’s why she began writing poems. She dedicated her poems her first love Lejser Fichman. Some of her texts already show that there was no future for their love because Lejser wanted to emigrate to Palestine to find his luck there.  

http://www.selma.tv/de/selma

Until now the story is nothing special, there are probably thousands of women who had no luck with their first love and maybe also wrote poems about this. But the story changes enormously if I tell you that Selma was a Jewess. She was Jewess and lived during the third Reich. What that meant for her is probably unnecessary to say.. Selma escape from the ghetto she lived in but was found again. She also never saw Lejser again because he had to do heavy labour. When Selma was deported, she could make it to give Else Schächter her poems who finally gave it Lejser. He wanted to flee in 1944 and so he gave the book to another friend to save it for the future because he wasn’t sure if he’d survive. He made it till the Black Sea where he was sank in a ship by Soviets at the age of 21. At this time his girlfriend Selma was already dead for two years. She died 1942 in a labour camp.

Today there are 57 poems from this woman, nobody knows if there are anywhere more of them. 1968 Heinz Seydel published first Selma’s poems but he thought there were just two. In the seventies Jürgen Serke discovered them, he finally published the book 'Ich bin in Sehnsucht eingehüllt' [I’m shrouded in desire].

Sometimes it seems to me like Selma knew about her fate. Her poems are full of hope, full of dolefullness and also full of greenness.

[Honestly I couldn’t find an English version of the poem, so I try to translate it. Of course the art of writing will be missing then unfortunately.]

Lullaby for the desire

O put darling,

the head in the hands

and listen I sing you a song.

I sing you from woe and from dead and from the end,

I sing you from the luck that has passed.

Come on, close your eyes,

I wanna cradle you then,

we’ll both dream from luck

we’ll both dream the goldest lies,

we’ll dream us far far away.

And see darling,

in the dream there return

all the days full of light.

Forget the hours, the woes and empties

of dolefulness and sorrow and sacrifice.

But then the awake

darling is dread

oh everything is emptier than before

Oh, could the dreams build my luck again

expel my wild-hot woe!

Selma Meerbaum-Eisinger

_Marie_

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